30 July 2009

Cherry skirt to dress

About a year ago I bought some really nice cherry-print fabric. I love cherry-print fabrics!So I made this skirt out of it.The skirt uses basically two rectangles, each 75 cm x 100 cm, for the skirtpiece and two smaller rectangles for the stomachpiece. The stomachpieces are made by using my waist and hip measurement, and the distance between those two. So each piece is on top the half of the waist measurement, the height is the distance between the waist and hip. And the lower part of the piece is half of my hip measurement. I hope I've explained it right this way, it's easier to draw than to write. Unfortunatly I don't own a scanner (and am very crappy with paint) so I couldn't put in a drawing of it.

The skirt pieces are both pleated using the boxpleating method until half of the hip measurement is reached (or until it fit's the stomach piece).The zipper is inserted at one of the seams at the side.And so I got my skirt. I've made about 4 skirts the same way, they just fit so nicely and have a nice 'Swoosh'.But after a while, perhaps last month, I wasn't so happy with the skirt anymore. It was a bit too long and too wide on the hips (did I loose some weight?). So one evening while rummaging through my fabric stash I found the cherry-print scraps from when I made the skirt. Then an idea popped up, couldn't I use this fabric and make the skirt into a dress? Besides skirts, I absolutely love dresses.So I went searching for some nice examples, and my eye was caught by those rockabilly/pin-up dresses. They use cherryprint dresses as well, so perhaps I could make mine look like one of theirs? A few examples:This, this, this and this.And so I drafted two halterstyle pieces for the bust. The ends can be tied together at the neck or can cross at the back and hook on the buttons. So it can be a halterstyle dress or a cross laced back. See the pics. I just love this dress! Perfect for summer.